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Sunday, June 2, 2013

Getting Ready for Playtesting

Now that I have two armies painted and represented, I can begin play-testing on a more serious basis. (See next week for my post of my completed Colonists.) To that end, I have updated a few of the rules, mostly to incorporate my latest ideas on Rate of Fire and Wounding. Plus, I have messed around a bit with the Melee rules.

Rate of Fire/Rate of Attacks
Rate of Fire has three values, written like this A/B/C. The first value is the stationary value. If the model has not moved that turn, it fires at this rate. The second value is the moving value. If the model has moved that turn, it fires at that rate. The third value is the Suppressed value. (Or the Buttoned value, if it is a vehicle.) If the unit is Suppressed or Buttoned, it fires at this rate UNLESS it has moved, and the moving value is lower.

A value of .5 means that only every other otherwise eligible model (round up) may fire or attack once.

Geek Notes
Most small arms will have a value of 2/1/1. Slow-firing ones will have a value of 1/.5/.5. So typical infantry model will gain an advantage if he is stationary. An unwieldy weapon (like a heavy machinegun) will have a low moving value, or even a value of 0, to represent the difficulty of setting it up. It may have a higher Suppressed value, however, since one in position, it is relatively to fire.

Removing the to-Hit penalty for moving and Suppression does all kinds of good things to the matrix of math by reducing the necessity to roll 6+s for things.

To-Wound For each Hit, you will need to determine if the model is Wounded.

The to-Wound roll is subject to modifiers:

If the model has Armor or Toughness, then the difficulty increases by 1 for each level of Toughness and/or Armor.

If the attacker has a Massive weapon, then reduce Toughness for each level of Massive.

If the attacker has an AP weapon, then reduce Armor by each level of AP.

Once Toughness or Armor is reduced to 0, neither Massive nor AP have any additional effect.

If no modifiers apply, or if the modifiers cancel out, the Model is automatically Wounded.

Otherwise, roll a die for each model. The score needed to wound the model must exceed the total modifier score.

Geek Notes
In my previous playtests, I found it really hard to calculate in my head the score I needed to wound things. And rolling a 2+ for so many models took a lot of time, without much affecting the game. This system simplifies the addition. However, to achieve roughly the same statistical to-wound, I will need to increase all Modifiers by 1. So a Toughness 1 Brute (wounded on a 3+ under my older system) will now need to be a Toughness 2 Brute. The same with armor values.

Firefight
Models that are planning to Charge in the Melee phase may fire Pre-Assault Shooting. Models that fire Pre-Assault shooting fire at their Suppressed RoF rate and count as moving. These models do not actually become Suppressed by making this choice -- they just use the Suppressed value. They also suffer a -1 penalty to Hit.

Melee
At the start of the Melee phase, the player whose turn it is declares which of his units wish to Charge.

Suppressed models may not charge.

Models that fired or Lay Down in the Shooting phase may never Charge. Models that fired or Lay Down in the Firefight phase may not normally Charge. However, models that made Pre-Assault Shooting may charge, provided their unit is not Suppressed.

The player then moves any eligible models in his Charging unit.

Geek Notes

I've hesitated over how exactly to handle shooting by a model that is moving from Firefight to Melee. I don't want to forbid such shooting entirely, but I do want a Charging model to sacrifice performance in Firefight. That way, troops that are best in Firefight may not want to Charge, and troops that are best in Melee will be poor in Firefight. I'm still not sure I have the mixture right.